Curt Doolittle

Theme: Truth

  • STATE OF THE ART (personal fears) I feel really comfortable with jumping off whe

    STATE OF THE ART

    (personal fears)

    I feel really comfortable with jumping off where Penelope Maddy left off with her Second Philosopher’s AREALISM, and transforming her basic arguments into realism via operational language. That’s not hard. That solves the problem of communicating the death of platonism.

    As for contemporary philosophy, it looks like there are only two active philosophers worth following. Which is kind of scary if you think about it. The most heralded philosophers are largely the continentals now. A fact which I find terrifying. Because it’s just elaborate christian mysticism trying to justify socialism. (It’s creepy. It’s the mental equivalent of working on weaponizing the bird flu virus into an unstoppable plague. But since we’ve had a number of conceptual plagues – most of them by jewish authors for some reason or other, which I can’t comprehend: zoroaster, abraham, jesus, peter and paul, muhammed, rousseau, kant, marx, freud, cantor, heidegger – I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the effort to formulate a new religion continues unabated. )

    There are two good and active philosophers: Searle and Dennett. Otherwise contemporary philosophy is a desert. I am not brave enough to think I”m in that class of minds. I’m not. I just stumbled on the right answers like the poor fellows who discovered Lexan. But I have definitely solved the following problems so far as ethics, politics and political economy are concerned:

    1) Mathematical Realism. (I seem to be the only one to do this.)

    2) Ethical Realism. (I seem to be the only one to do this)

    3) The unification of philosophical disciplines

    4) The formal logic of cooperation.

    5) The institutions of morally heterogeneous polities. And given that I don’t think I’ve really stated anything terribly novel in the institutional solutions department, all I have done is provide an explanation of why a particular set of solutions are scientific, rational, ethical, moral and just. Rather than some arbitrary moralistic Hail Mary play. (see Rawls.)

    I understand Kripke’s innovation pretty clearly I think. But I still think that the solution to internally consistent logic is replaced by the logic of cooperation. I just don’t know if I can really take that line of thought any further into a critique of formal logic. So I don’t know the impact that operational language would have on formal logic. So far as I can tell, the problem is no longer one of language and statements but the reducibility of statements to human action. If you grok that one change alone, then you sort of understand all you need to.

    I can sort of reconcile this with Kripke. Although I have to go back and re-read Naming and Necessity again with my current understanding and see if my previous understanding holds up.

    BUT THE PROBLEM WILL BE READABILITY

    I still think it’s going to be hard without the help of a patient editor to capture these ideas as a coherent whole. I can make a philosophy that you can study once you understand it’s value. But I don’t think I can sell someone on that philosophy through easy of comprehension. I have reduced most of the central arguments to pretty simple concepts. But holding the reader’s hand through the journey is a lot harder than simply stating the definitions and methods. I just don’t think I can do it. I don’t think so because I understand the problem of the limit that one can hold in short term memory. And my crutch to get around that problem is to use the text as the short term memory that I don’t have, but that most great authors do have. So far my only solution has been to just keep trying until I can reduce it. But at this point I’m not sure that I’m making further progress at reduction.

    ie: I’m afraid to put finger to keyboard. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot easier to let months pass improving on minor points than it is to tackle the equivalent of Elinor Ostrom’s grammar. I know full well that I’ve completed the ethics, the philosophy, the institutions and the applications. But I’m afraid to confront my inadequacy as a writer. So afraid that it’s hindering me.

    Not sure what to do other than power through it in a snowy chalet somewhere… Not afraid of much really. Not afraid of dying even. But I’m afraid to fail at this for sure…..

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-05 16:39:00 UTC

  • MORAL INTUITIONISM IS A TEST NOT A TRUTH. I agree with moral intuitionalism. How

    MORAL INTUITIONISM IS A TEST NOT A TRUTH.

    I agree with moral intuitionalism. However, that is a statement about our ability to test moral statements. It is not a test of whether moral statements are NECESSARY and therefore TRUE or not.

    You might notice that I don’t rely on NORMATIVE expressions of morality EVER in my arguments.

    Introspection is not only insufficient for the solution to the mind body problem, and the problem of consciousness, but it is also insufficient for analysis of morality.

    In fact, any philosophical argument that relies upon introspection, is, I am fairly certain, a fallacy. (Although I am willing to be proven wrong if someone can provide an example.)

    Truth is a function of correspondence on one hand and internal consistency on the other. Introspection fails both of those tests without the use of instrumentation to test our thoughts.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-05 09:08:00 UTC

  • THE VALUE OF ARGUING WITH THE TINFOIL HAT CROWD It is ABSOLUTELY valuable to arg

    THE VALUE OF ARGUING WITH THE TINFOIL HAT CROWD

    It is ABSOLUTELY valuable to argue with the Tinfoil Hat crowd, so that you can master the common rhetorical fallacies without relying on normative assumptions for defense. Normative assumptions are just another paradigmatic frame.

    As you move into more and more intellectual and academic debate, you realize that the only difference between the Yahoo-news-group idiots, the postmodern social science idiots, the scientistic idiots, and the public intellectual idiots is the density of the tinfoil. The nature of the individuals assumptions simply mature from:

    a) schizophrenic bias, to

    b) confirmation bias, to

    c) nihilistic bias, to

    d) pseudoscientific bias, to

    e) methodological bias, to

    f) paradigmatic bias.

    Almost no one gets to skeptical empiricism in the Popperian, and certainly not in the Poincaré models. You can end up like Paul Krugman and ignore the fact that what you’re deducing from your measurements about monetary policy is merely noise, when the military expansion of anglo rules of trade is the signal.

    You can end up like John Ralws and Sam Harris and confuse analogy with causality, then compounding your confusion by making the error of aggregation.

    The best defense I have made against these errors is to focus on defining and reconciling spectrums – the golden mean. You can make an assumptive line between two ideal types pretty easily – the least work path. But it’s much harder to make errors if you define the different spectrums and see how they intersect with one another. It is much harder to reconcile sets of definitions in ordered spectra with each other.

    And it is much easier with a rich language than an allegorical language. It is even easier in operational language.

    Or at least. As easy as it can be.

    WHICH IS WHY I”M ALWAYS WRITING LISTS (ordered sets).

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-04 04:39:00 UTC

  • CORRECTING GEORGE LAKOFF’S POSTMODERN FASCINATION WITH THE EXPERIENTIAL CONCEPTS

    CORRECTING GEORGE LAKOFF’S POSTMODERN FASCINATION WITH THE EXPERIENTIAL CONCEPTS; “EMBODIED” and METAPHOR

    Just reading his work makes me agitated. As if introspection could tell us something on the one end, and as if reduction could tell us something on the other.

    What follows are three important points. The second of which is profoundly important.

    Propertarianism:

    REGARDING #1 BELOW

    (a) We must use a variety of instrumental systems (logics) and instrumental means (technology) to reduce that which is imperceptible with our senses, to analogies to experience.

    (b) That our senses are limited to that which we can experience with our bodies is certainly true. However, that metaphors which can easily be loaded, are equal to logics which cannot be, is to make the postmodern error that our feelings are more than descriptions of changes in state given our CURRENT knowledge. They tell us only whether we are ignorant of something or not. They don’t tell us anything meaningful about the universe. This is why introspection is meaningless activity, while action is meaningful.

    (b) Given that we must reduce to analogy to experience that which we wish to perceive, then there is a maximum level of precision that humans can make use of in any theory of action in any given context. In this sense, newton’s theory is the greatest precision we need for all perceptible human action. As such it is not false, it is just only applicable to the instrumentation that is available to our senses. (I haven’t said this quite right. I have to think about how to state it better.) There is a maximum level of precision that we need to understand human behavior. I am fairly sure that propertarianism is the maximum level of precision necessary for the formulation of political cooperation.

    REGARDING #2 BELOW

    (a) All experience can be expressed in operational terms. Otherwise, per ’embodiment’ we cannot express it. The profundity of this statement should not be overlooked. In other words, there is nothing we cannot express that we can experience. We may lack the language for it. But that is all. For example, as I have argued, mathematics can be expressed entirely operationally, yet mathematicians persist in discourse about ‘mathematical reality’, when no such thing exists or can exist in any meaningful sense other than as imagination. So, due to the necessity of simplifying terms, and the advantage of highly loading and framing terms, we obscure content. However, no content is actually obscurable in operational language. The problem is that as complexity increases the ability of the both the speaker and the listener to construct an and share an experience requires some sort of reduction. But that does not mean that the entire experience cannot be articulated operationally. (If I could get this one point across then my work would be done. lol) This is what praxeologists have failed to understand. All experience may be reduced to operational language, and therefore truth tested, but not much can be deduced from that statement without the additional use of logic, science and instrumentation to extend our perceptions to that which we cannot perceive without their assistance.

    REGARDING #3 BELOW

    (a) Reason is not very complicated. Experience is the use of short term memory to determine changes in the state of our assets both real and imagined in real time, and storing those changes in state in long term memory given the amplitude of the change. We then compare experiences with other experiences. And we test those differences. We are very limited in the number of differences that we can test. So we rely on our logical technologies to extend our memories so that we can break a problem into simple sections which our simple minds are able to solve one at a time. As such reason and experience are only different from the natural world in that they exist only with the passage of time.

    ———-

    #1″ Reason is not disembodied, as the tradition has largely held, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experience. This is not just the innocuous and obvious claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim that the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment. The same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual systems and modes of reason. Thus, to understand reason we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanisms of neural binding. In summary, reason is not, in any way, a transcendent feature of the universe or of disembodied mind. Instead, it is shaped crucially by the peculiarities of our human bodies, by the remarkable details of the neural structure of

    our brains, and by the specifics of our everyday functioning in the world.”

    #2 “Reason is evolutionary, in that abstract reason builds on and makes use of forms of perceptual and motor inference present in “lower” animals. The result is a Darwinism of reason, a rational Darwinism: Reason, even in its most abstract form, makes use of, rather than transcends, our animal nature. The discovery that reason is evolutionary utterly changes our relation to other animals and changes our conception of human beings as uniquely rational. Reason is thus not an essence that separates us from other animals; rather, it places us on a continuum with them.

    #3″ Reason is not “universal” in the transcendent sense; that is, it is not part of the structure of the universe. It is universal, however, in that it is a capacity shared universally by all human beings. What allows it to be shared are the commonalities that exist in the way our minds are embodied.”

    • Reason is not completely conscious, but mostly unconscious.

    • Reason is not purely literal, but largely metaphorical and imaginative.

    • Reason is not dispassionate, but emotionally engaged.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-01 16:02:00 UTC

  • THANK YOU -ALL- FOR LETTING ME TEST MY RECENT IDEAS ON YOU AND YOUR PATIENCE 🙂

    THANK YOU -ALL- FOR LETTING ME TEST MY RECENT IDEAS ON YOU AND YOUR PATIENCE 🙂

    It was necessary. It’s the only way to test ideas that I know of. I just construct arguments. They’re like little robot gladiators. If they succeed we learn, if they fail we learn. But the only way to test your own understanding is to argue your points, and see if they survive.

    UNITING FACTIONS

    I should, at this point, be able to achieve my goals, and unite the Conservative (normative and moral), Dark Enlightenment (scientific and political) and Anarcho Capitalist (economic and philosophical) movements in a common rational, political and moral language.

    Each group is ‘right’ about something and ‘wrong’ about other things. This is because each group gives greater weight to some social properties and less to others.

    POLITICAL IDENTITIES

    The rough strategy involves giving each group an identity or specialization, and using propertarian language as a means of working together, so that each group does not have to master, or even value, the biases of the other.

    Although the work of doing all that ought to be a bit daunting. Mostly because intellect is not evenly distributed across these groups. It’s hard enough to have a challenging talk with libertarians, but …. you know, having that talk with conservatives, and some DE folks, is an exercise in futility.

    But reality is created by chanting. Repetition allows us to gradually connect the networks of neurons needed to understand associations.

    The grammar of this language is pretty simple. It takes some getting used to. Because we’re linguistically lazy, and formal logic is linguistically burdensome, in exchange for argumentative clarity, and praxeological testability.

    I HAD TO TEST MY ARGUMENTS AGAINST ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS TO REPLACE THEM WITH PROPERTARIAN ETHICS.

    I’m sure that I frustrated some libertarians. No one likes the slaughter of their sacred cows. Even though, it’s pretty clear that I’ve forever dispatched Rothbardian ethics from rational consideration.

    I put a bullet in the NAP/PrivateProperty that it cannot recover from. The wound is mortal. It just depends on how long it will take for the idea to die.

    I’ve demonstrated that either the NAP is the wrong test of violation of property, OR that the definition of property is insufficient in scope for rational use in a polity.

    In propertarianism I have taken the approach of extending the definition of property and maintaining the principle of aggression against it because I have based, correctly, the source of property rights on the organized use of violence, and aggression is consistent with that argumentative logic.

    I HAD TO TEST OPERATIONALISM AS AN ATTACK ON PLATONISM IN ORDER TO CREATE UNIVERSAL ETHICS, AND CONVERT PRAXEOLOGY INTO THE MISSING BRANCH OF LOGIC.

    It was actually fascinating to see people in math and science DESPERATELY cling to their platonic arealism with the same fervor that mystics justify their defense of a supernatural god.

    I’m still …. really… awed, that anyone presented with constructive(intuitionist,realist,operational) arguments would even for a MOMENT question that platonism was merely a crutch for the weak mind.

    But operationalism and the logic of cooperation (praxeology) form the missing logic with which we begin to see all philosophy as a theory of action.

    SO THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE

    I guess I have to get serious now about (a) contributing to the other political dialogs, (b) introducing them to these ideas, and (c) producing the grammar and (d) finishing the first book (at least).

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-31 03:54:00 UTC

  • LEARNING: WHAT WAS RIGHT FROM HOPPE AND HAYEK. WHAT WAS WRONG FROM ROTHBARD I le

    LEARNING: WHAT WAS RIGHT FROM HOPPE AND HAYEK. WHAT WAS WRONG FROM ROTHBARD

    I learned pretty much everything that made a marginal difference in my understanding of what was right in libertarianism from Hoppe and Hayek. I learned what was WRONG with libertarianism I learned from Rothbard.

    Unfortunately, Hans is romantically attached to Rothbard for justifiable reasons. Something which pains me pretty much every day. Because it’s unnecessary, and detrimental to both our cause, and to his legacy.

    Socialism isn’t meaningful for us to devote intellectual energy to any longer. Postmodernism and Feminism are the weapons being used in the collusion between academia and the state to deprive us of property right. Rothbard’s ethics aren’t meaningful any longer. They were an ideological rather than ratio-scientific means of argument no better than those of the postmodernists. Other than his historical work, his philosophical work is ideological drivel.

    But the Hoppeian solution to the problem of institutions *IS* relevant. Anarchism in the sense of a purely normative social order isn’t relevant any longer – because data confirms that this approach would be against the self interests of the many. But micro-private-government is, and heterogeneous government is, because smaller is better. Bigger is a vehicle for war. But a swiss militia as the afghans have proved, is the most effective means of preventing aggression: men behind every rock – or blade of grass.

    It’s time for a reformation. A cleansing. A meeting of the minds. A council of Nicaea. An expunging of immoral and unethical obscurantist doctrines from the philosophy of liberty.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-29 05:34:00 UTC

  • “PROPERTARIANISM: THE LOGIC OF ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN LIBERTARIANISM” Help me

    “PROPERTARIANISM: THE LOGIC OF ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN LIBERTARIANISM”

    Help me save liberty from the rothbardian ghetto of immoral obscurant and deceptive logic.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-29 05:10:00 UTC

  • (I can get my facts wrong like anyone else. And I can get my theory wrong – alth

    (I can get my facts wrong like anyone else. And I can get my theory wrong – although I’m better at that than I used to be, because I tend to test a theory pretty excruciatingly. But you know, my logic is pretty damned good. All the way ’round. I know that. Simply from experience I know that. Logic is an incredibly useful tool. The only way to test theories and facts for internal consistency is through logic, and the only way to test external correspondence is by constantly subjecting your theories to tests against all data new that you can find. You’re never really ‘done’ testing your theory until no further increase in use can be obtained from it. When you run out of things that you can test and it holds up for the purposes you need it then you’re pretty well set. As such people jump to conclusions far too early. The only way you know something is when you run out of ways to test it. And you must test both internal consistency and external correspondence for both explanatory power and falsifications power.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-27 05:29:00 UTC

  • WELL, I DID IT. I CREATED “SCIENTIFIC AND ETHICAL REALISM” Didn’t mean to. Just

    WELL, I DID IT. I CREATED “SCIENTIFIC AND ETHICAL REALISM”

    Didn’t mean to. Just was a byproduct of trying to solve the problem of ethical rules for a post-democratic society.

    Universal ethics.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-26 16:17:00 UTC

  • KNOWLEDGE OF CONSTRUCTION VS KNOWLEDGE OF USE Joel Mokyr did a wonderful job in

    KNOWLEDGE OF CONSTRUCTION VS KNOWLEDGE OF USE

    Joel Mokyr did a wonderful job in Gifts of Athena, but he has the strange jewish predilection for conflating verbalisms with existence. He refers to “Knowledge of how” and “knowledge of what”. These are verbal categories only. They aren’t causal categories.

    I use the terms “Knowledge of Construction” and “Knowledge of Use” (how). While “Use” and “How” share similar properties, “Construction and What” are sufficiently different in properties to mean considerably different things.

    “Construction” requires action in time. I have no idea what “What” should mean other than an empty verbal category. It’s a purely self-centered, experiential statement.

    I am fairly sure that if someone says they understand something, it means a knowledge of construction. Whether they can use it or not is only a small portion of the possible domain.

    Construction, Use, Intended Consequence, Unintended Consequence.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-26 11:16:00 UTC